For the hard core tech geeks out there, TI’s processors rarely disappoint. It seems almost certain now that the first Ice Cream Sandwich phone (Nexus Prime?) will be using a TI OMAP 4 processor. How do we know? First, that picture at the top of the article was not some photo shop job our tech people did, but something that Motorola published themselves. To top it off, the community was able to predict an Nvidia processor for the first Honeycomb tablets based on what is posted on the Android Open Source Project site. Taking a look at the kernel github, there are a lot of posts by Google (duh),TI, Imagination Technologies, and Broadcom. Similar to how we used this to point at the Tegra 2 chip, this points strongly to the TI OMAP 4 (the best guess we have is the 4460 series). I’ve already said I’m holding out for the Nexus Prime, the fact that it’ll be running the most recent OMAP4 processor all but assures that notion for me. How about you guys? Who’s holding out buying other phones for Google’s next pure Android experience?

ARCHOS is turning things up a notch. They have just announced two Android 3.1 Honeycomb tablets. The ARCHOS 80 G9 sports an 8-inch (1024 x 768) screen and the ARCHOS 101 G9 sports a 10.1-inch (1280 x 800) screen. That is the only difference between the two.

The Motorola Droid 3 came up in a GLBenchmark yesterday and performed very well. It was originally thought that it would come with a Tegra 2 since it is not an LTE phone. This benchmark confirms that it will indeed come with Texas Instruments OMAP4.

The first test puts the Droid 3 just behind the Optimus 3D for the Egypt test, but the Droid 3 does have a higher resolution (qHD) display so you have to wonder what would have happened if the displays were the same.

Alright, so I wouldn’t call it a “spanking” per say, but I would definitely call it…unexpected, sort of. We all know that the OMAP 4430, housed in the LG Optimus 3D, boasts some pretty hefty dual-core action. And when put to the test by AnandTech, along side Nvidia’s Tegra 2 and Samsung’s Exynos 4210, we can see it slightly shining through and coming out on top in the browser and graphical benchmark department. Dual-core CPU’s are becoming quite the norm around these parts as the competition is expanding rapidly. As I always say, choice is good and you can never have too much of it, I think. Im looking forward to the day when a device is released with nothing less than dual-core CPU’s and performance is taken to a whole new level as a result. A good CPU combined with a great GPU, a big screen, HDMI out yada yada yada, and it’s bon voyage for my PC. How about you? Do you favor one of these dual-core processors over another? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

At MWC, in the Texas Instruments booth, there could be found a cozy little shack up of the unlikeliest of partners. Get your head out of the gutter man. We’re talking about Pathpartner and Ittiam. At the event, Pathpartner demoed 720p video calling over that famous VOIP app, oh what’s it called? Oh yeah, Skype. You may have heard of it? As of today, Pathpartner is working with Skype in an attempt to get “Skype certified”. The app makers hope to successfully secure a number of other vendors, besides Ittiam, to get their application arriving stock on mobile devices.

The company’s senior technical lead, Alexy Mathew Joseph performed the demo on the OMAP 4 chip set platform, an extremely powerful CPU touted by TI. The OMAP 4 platform offers a number of powerful options such as 1080p video recording and playback, 20 megapixel imaging and approximately a week of audio play time. And now we can add 720p video calls. It’s no surprise why Pathpartner wants to develop the rich video application on a handset running this platform. This is certainly promising for Android users as it opens up a slew of doors when it comes to communication over video. The app is being reported as possibly hitting Android devices some time near the end of 2011. Head back over to Talk Android as we keep a close eye on the company’s emerging product and don’t forget to let us know what you think in the comments below.

Imagine my excitement when I opened up my inbox this morning to find a press release from Texas Instruments that TI has officially announced their new TI OMAP4440, the latest in the OMAP 4 family of CPU’s. The new CPU boasts:

1.25x increase in graphics performance

30 percent decrease in webpage load time

2x increase in 1080p video playback performance

clock speeds as fast as 1.5 GHz per ARM® Cortex™-A9 MPCore™

According to Remi El-Ouazzane, vice president of OMAP platform business unit:

The increased performance given by the OMAP4440 applications processor illustrates TI’s ability to push mobile computing possibilities with the right processor architecture enveloped in the right platform. We seized an opportunity to enhance the platform capabilities driving the OMAP4430 processor’s success today. As OMAP4430 processor-based products hit the market in first half 2011, we’re arming our customers with a huge performance boost via an easy migration to OMAP4440 processor for their next wave of exciting devices. The resulting user experiences will radically impact how consumers continue to integrate mobile technology into their daily lives.

The new OMAP4440 will be sampling in Q1 of 2011, and TI expects mass production to start in the second half of the same year. The new CPU is said to increase capabilities of mobile video teleconferencing, stereoscopic-3D and gesture recognition. For a full lineup of technical specs, hit the break for the full presser.

What do you think about TI’s new processing power? Be sure to let us know in the comments!